What can you use to make a family tree of life?

You can do anything in your free time. Read books by renowned garden designers, or clean the grout in the bathroom. If you are more drawn to the mysterious, nothing beats digging into your family history. You never know what you will discover. Not only will you learn a little about your ancestors’ lives, but various names and places will also start to make sense. Did you know that old parish registers can help you build a lovely family tree that will remind you who you really are?

You need documents

Gather every document you can find, by which we mean:

• birth certificate
• death certificate
• marriage certificate

All of this will help you uncover your family history. Now start searching. Use the internet. Here you will find a wide range of information about your family. Search the parish registers (births, marriages and deaths). Unsurprisingly, these are real old scanned books that were once kept by individual parishes.

Visit the website of the Czech Genealogical and Heraldic Society (Česká genealogická a heraldická společnost). Under the Digitisation tab, you can find the website of the relevant archive based on where you, or rather your ancestors, lived. To protect personal data, you can only search registers that are considered closed. This means, for example, that in a register of births the last entry must be more than 100 years old, in a register of marriages more than 75 years old, and the same 75-year protection period applies to registers of deaths. Although this restriction is frustrating, you may still be surprised in time at how far back you have got.  

What can you make your family tree from?

There are many ways to create a family tree.

Digital : if you are not the creative type, go for a digital version. MyHeritage is very popular and well liked. It is a website where you can create your tree very easily. You can also find distant relatives there. The intriguing part is that you can take a DNA test that reveals more of your family’s journey. This includes your origins, such as whether you come from France or Germany, or whether one of your distant ancestors may even have lived in Asia.

Family Bibles: in their day, Bibles were very popular for recording family trees. Here and there, a great-grandmother or great-grandfather would write their family’s details in them: who was born, who died, who got married. If you own such a Bible, it can be a lovely way to continue something that someone started, for example, a hundred years ago.

Wooden family tree: many companies will make your family tree from wood. You choose the dimensions, the type of wood and the engraving. You can also make decorations in the shape of hearts or teardrops, on which you then write the names of your loved ones. However, if you are handy, you can make a wooden tree like this yourself.

Photo frame : perfect for the wall. Choose the pictures or material, and you are done. It is easy to match to your interior

Family tree book: there are many books on the market that let you create your own family tree. They are not expensive and they take up little space. They fit easily on any bookshelf.

Poster : all you need is a large sheet of paper, coloured markers or crayons, and your imagination. Your family tree does not have to go back as far as Žižka, a few lines are enough.

Remember that this is meant to be fun, so do not feel down if none of your ancestors was ever a prince. On the other hand, you can take comfort in the fact that you do not have to look after a chateau or castle.

Source: mygoodtrust.com